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New Mexico Highlands University inducted the 1981 Cowboys football team — which featured at least three players from Valencia County — into the school’s H-Club Hall of Fame.
On that squad, which is the only NMHU football team to win the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference championship outright, were Lawrence Sanchez, current superintendent of Belen Consolidated Schools, BHS graduate David Castillo and Mike Estrada, who spent more than 20 years as an Eagles’ assistant football coach.
All three attended the induction ceremony Oct. 10 in Las Vegas and were touched by the honor.
“The HOF banquet and homecoming weekend were awesome,” Castillo said.
“It’s hard to believe that now that we are all in our 60s that we are as close as we were way back then,” Sanchez said.
“It was an amazing season,” Castillo said of the 1981 campaign, which saw the Cowboys go 7-3, despite losing their first two games. Castillo pointed out Highlands didn’t have the biggest team, but “we learned a lot from the previous seasons.”
The success of the 1981 Cowboys may have caught some by surprise following a 4-7 season.
“We were just having fun, playing a game we loved,” said Sanchez, who graduated from Moriarty High School. “I don’t think we really understood what we had accomplished.
“It didn’t matter if you were a star or someone who barely saw the field. We were all together in everything that we did.”
Sanchez says that bond remains 43 years later.
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Estrada, who has lived in Belen since 1995, was a Las Vegas product, who went straight from Robertson High School to New Mexico Highlands and the championship team.
“They welcomed me as a young pup,” said Estrada, a nose tackle, recalled about the more seasoned players. “They never thought they were better than the others. They were always helpful.”
Castillo shared he wasn’t recruited by NMHU but was invited to walk on after Buddy Dillow, a former BHS football coach, wrote a letter to the Cowboys’ staff.
“I was shocked at the size of the players,” Castillo recalled.
Despite starting out as the team’s smallest defensive back, Castillo would eventually earn All-Conference honors.
The start of training camp in 1981 was brutal, according to Sanchez, with a full week of three-a-day practices.
“Toughest thing I ever went through in my career,” he said.
Sanchez never started at NMHU but faced All-American Jay Lewis in practice every day, which made something very apparent.
“I better pay attention to my studies because any aspirations I had towards playing in the NFL were not going to come true,” he remembers.
The trio used their experiences and education at Highlands to have successful professional careers.
Sanchez has been with Belen Consolidated Schools since 1996, the last four as superintendent.
Castillo retired in 2016 after 30 years at Kirtland Air Force Base as a contract cost/price analyst and now works for Galapagos LLC.
Estrada has been a Federal Aviation Administration employee in Albuquerque for decades, as an air traffic controller, supervisor and now operations manager.
There seemed to be a common thread as the three reminisced.
“The chemistry and camaraderie on that team were outstanding,” said Sanchez.
“The brotherhood. The camaraderie,” Estrada fondly remembers.
